Ganneff's Little Blog

Thoughts of a small and very unimportant Debian Developer

Nice how some people (on purpose?) try to misunderstand everything. And love to flame.

(Yes, it was my mistake to not explain the meaning of we right at the top - or in that mail at all -, sorry.)

Lets address a few of the issues:

The whole thing adds more bureaucracy to NM and makes it harder to become a Developer.

Entirely wrong. In fact it makes it a lot easier to enter the project.

Imagine the old, current, way:

Get DM for your package(s), signing SC/DFSG and get advocate(s).

Get a DD to check your package and upload it with some obcure extra flag to allow you to upload it yourself. Sometimes, except for those bugs which block you from it.

Or alternatively do all your package work through a sponsor, always searching for one for even the smallest bugfix.

At some point you want to get a “real Developer”, so you apply as NM

Get another advocate to speak for you

Wait until you get an AM assigned.

ID check

P&P (lots of questions, including SC/DFSG/DMUP)

T&S (again lots of questions and also Package checks)

Wait for FrontDesk (usually fast)

Wait for DAM (usually fast these days)

Hello new DD.

This can easily take up weeks, if not months and means lots of double work, especially for the new maintainer.

Now imagine the new way:

Apply at nm.debian.org

Get one or more advocate(s) to speak for you

Wait until you get an AM assigned.

ID check, together with SC/DFSG/DMUP

Small P&P, with the size entirely depending on what the NM-Committee wants to see, so probably just the few bits about Debians philosophy.

Yay, you are DC or DM now (whatever you wanted).

In case you selected DM, to get a package into the list of (source) packages you are allowed to upload, every NM-Committee member can now do that, after they did a little check of it Which means your AM will set an initial list of them when he/she approves you, every NM-Committee member can then adjust it whenever needed.

And as every Developer can easily become a member of that committee, basically everyone can do this.

Let the time pass, get packages uploaded, be a member of the Debian community, whatever you want.

Want to do more / have more rights? Say so in your nm.debian.org page[1]

An AM will be assigned again, to check that your request is valid and should be granted, depending on what you want (DME/DD). Which should be along the lines of

passed the minimum waiting time?

has shown enough proof that they know what it means to be a DME/DD? (Ie. knows how to deal with packages, users, votes, whatever applies).

Assuming one took the DM way and wants to get DD, this could be done by something as simple as a package check and then listing a number of URLs showing the DAMs the work the applicant did in the past. (Like, preparing lots of patches for RC bugs, doing lots of good maintenance within their own package / package teams, lots of documentation written, things translated, whatever).

The exact action needed will IMO highly depend on the applicant. The goal should be to clearly show that they know what they do. How that is proved is something the AM can decide (and the NM Committee can give hints / examples). The question to answer is “Can a person that hasn’t dealt as close as you with the applicant fully support the statement Yes, this applicant should have the DD/DME status! or not?”. Currently this is achieved by using the template questions.

The AM approves your request

Wait for FrontDesk (will be easy, so fast)

Wait for DAM (will be easy, so fast)

Hello new DD/DME

This means you can pass the last step within a day (or two, add the usual delays that you always have in a medium that E-Mail is :) )

Granted, currently the time it takes to wait for an AM is just too long. We do not have enough AMs. I think thats partially due to the amount of work required as AM and partially due to the level of knowledge we require from AMs. I do think that this will get better in the future, thanks to the changes, as the work an AM has to do will be vastly different from today.

[1] This, of course, needs to be coded in some way.

The DAMs can’t just decide this, they must ask everyone.

Well, IMO the changes proposed are within the rights of the DPL’s delegation (and constitution) gives to the DAMs (and for the upload thing, Ftpmaster). This is account (archive) management. This is not taking away rights like voting, getting delegated, standing for DPL or starting a GR.

This only opens a new, much easier, way to join Debian. And leaves everyone the option to join Debian in a non-technical, not package-bound, way.

Yes, every DD can start a GR to override this, if they want to. This is part of the constitution and a way to let the project decide if it does not like a decision a delegate did.

This has to be stopped by a GR now, we can’t accept it. Or it should be discussed at length later.

Keep in mind that this is not yet implemented, and won’t be for a bit more. It needs work on multiple places to be done first. And we sure will modify this including good suggestions/constructive critic. (Changes needed are some for the nm.debian.org interface, within dak to allow the new style for DM or keyring-maint to take the keyring, to name a few examples. This will take time.)

But feel free to do the GR, as written above this is your right as a DD. This is IMO the way to go if you oppose the proposal because you do not want to make it easier to join Debian. Or because it does not go far enough (small steps anyone?) or for whatever other reason But then stop whining how hard it is to join Debian and that one should change this, please, you just lost every ground for it.

Debian is about packaging only and we should not welcome more people that do not do package works and everyone should have the same full set of rights.

Err, sure.

The naming should be changed

Hrm, maybe. I don’t think its so complicated, but well, why not.

There are many more things on the mailing list, but this post is already a little to long, so lets stop for now. I might blog more later on and reply to a bit more. I might also try and reply on the mailinglist, but erm, thats a HUGE thread already…

What I won’t reply to are those few people who wish me to die or suffer from something painful. Sorry, I have to disappoint you, none of this is on todays agenda.